The Unfinished Song: Taboo (12 page)

“I would not betray my pledged oath, my Chief,” said Kavio.

“No, you won’t. Because if I so much as sniff you seeking to overthrow me after all I have done for you, I will not just exile you. I will have you tossed back in this pit and drop the stone on your traitor’s head myself.”

Brena woke up to the disconcerting vision of Rthan watching her from across the room. The bath and clothing had replaced his ferocious dishevelment with a more civilized air, but that didn’t stop him from dominating the room with his sheer masculinity. As well she might have caged an aurochs bull in the hut.

Then there was the question of where to keep him while she instructed the Tavaedi Initiates in the mysteries.
Rthan had
promised not to attempt escape while in her presence. At the same time, he’d as much
as
promised he
would
try to escape the minute she left the hut. The stupid aurochs would probably get
himself
killed if she didn’t watch him as closely as
an
eagle watched a vole.

She found the simplest solution to be the most obvious. She took him with her.

In the First House on the Tor of the Initiates, a ladder led down into the kiva. The ceiling here was thrice the height of a man. Even Rthan could not complain he had to duck, though he looked dubious when he followed Brena down the ladder. Once underground, he blinked in surprise at the large white room, and she recalled that he’d probably never been in a kiva before. The Rainbow Labyrinth had introduced the use of kivas to Yellow Bear only a generation back. Most tribes used natural caves, hilltops or grottos for their dances.
The chamber was much more spacious than the stone tomb under the Tor of the Stone Hedge, and sunlight fed into the room from concealed shafts in the ceiling. A layer of adobe and white paint had been added over the raw rock, to provide a smooth finish and a flat floor. One end had a straight edge, the other end of the room terminated in a moon-shaped nave with an altar-like dais. Costumes, totems and other paraphernalia that smelled faintly of dye and incense, rested on the altar. No one else had arrived yet.

“Sit over there.” She pointed to a mat in the shadow behind the altar. “I trust I don’t have to tie you up?”

“You brought me here to cast a hex on me?” he asked without inflection.

Brena heaved an exasperated sigh. “No, I am to teach the Initiates.”

He glanced at her and again at the kiva, clearly uneasy. “You would let an enemy witness your society secrets?”

“You’re a Zavaedi, aren’t you?”

“I’ve given no oath--”

“I know exactly what you’ve promised, and what you haven’t promised, that’s why you’re here.”

His
lips
tweaked
into a wry smile. “Right. I’ll sit on the mat.”

The Initiates scrambled down the ladder like lizard
s, one
after another, until fresh, wide-eyed faces filled the room. Boisterous and nervous, they could hardly take their seats without bouncing, giggling and pointing. Automatically, she noted her daughters. Gwena and her friend Kemla were sitting behind Gwenika, mostly to poke her in the back and whisper things that caused her face to turn red. She kept turning around to admonish, “Stop it!”, “Leave me alone!”, “I mean it, you guys!”, which, of course, only encouraged them.

Brena marveled at how young they all looked. She walked to the nave at the far end of the room. The Tavaedi Initiates sat on mats around the other three walls, which left a large empty rectangular space in the middle.

She lifted a wooden cage. Though she knew what it contained, all she could see was a forlorn yellow pixie buzzing inside. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Rthan track something
else
in the cage, something she couldn’t see.

“What is in this cage?” she asked the Initiates.

“A pixie!”

“Several pixies!”

“No—only one.”

“Idiot, there are two.”

“I see three.”

“I only see one.”

Brena said flatly, “There are six.
One of each Chroma.
This is the first lesson you need to learn about magic, and about life. We all live in the same world, but we each see it differently. There are six Chromas—spectras of magic. Ordinary people cannot see any of them. How many of you see a single pixie?”

Her younger daughter Gwenika raised her hand, along with three quarters of the other young men and women in the room.

“
Your magic is One-Banded.
You are
Morvae
,” said Brena. “
Now—
how many of you see more than one?”

The other quarter of the Initiate Tavaedies raised their hands, including her older daughter Gwena.

“
Your magic is Many-Banded.
You’re
Imorvae
,” Brena told them. “To see Chromas, whether you see one or many, is called Vision. Vision serves different purposes. Today we will only go over the three simplest. We start with the fae. That's the easiest.  The fae
want
to be seen
—
they're terribly vain. They can even manifest to ordinary people, though no good comes of it. If humans are drunk, sick, or emotional—terrified, in love, vengeful—they might see fae. People with a Chroma, on the other hand, attract fae the way sugar loaves attract flies. The fae of your Chroma will approach you, talk to you, try to convince you to join a faery ring and dance—never accept such an offer, by the way,” she added.

“All Tavaedies can see at least one Chroma, whichever Chroma is strongest for them. Hertio the Builder now has an honored guest who can see all six, but that is because he is the son of a faery.
No one alive today except the White
Lady and her son has all six Chromas.”

Brena scanned the faces of her pupils. She pointed out one young man and one young woman,
both
of
Rainbow Labyrinth,
not surprisingly.

“Tamio of Broken Basket and Kemla of Full Basket, step forward.” The two exchanged glances as they met in the center of the room. “Look at these two. Not at the body, but at the aura. These two each have three Chromas, more than any of the rest of you. Kemla has Yellow, Orange and Red. I want those of you with Yellow, Orange or Red Chromas to look at her. Those of you with Green, Blue or Purple Chromas, look at Tamio. Concentrate. All of you should be able to see color in the halo of light around at least one of them.”

She could clearly see a golden halo around Kemla. She couldn’t see the Red or Orange, but trusted her colleagues of those Chromas the colors were present. Without meaning to, Brena glanced back at Rthan, as if he
were
one of her pupils, but he wasn’t studying Tamio. His focus rested on her. Disconcerted, she jerked her gaze away, cursing the heat that flushed her face. She felt his low, sultry chuckle like a tickle at the back of her neck.

“You may sit down, Kemla, Tamio.” said Brena. She kept her face impassive to hide her struggle to retain her hold on her lecture. “There are three kinds of being
s
. There are fae, who are made of pure light, pure Chroma. Then there are plants and animals, which were shaped from mud at
the
beginning
of this
world, and brought to life by the Aelfae. And then there’s us—humans. We are a mix of light and mud. So we have fleshy bodies, like animals, but we also have auras of light, like the fae. Every living human being has an aura. Even those with no magic have a pale white aura, though it is nearly invisible and certainly useless for magic.

“What else does Vision reveal besides fae and auras? A third kind of Vision is of
Patterns
, as in patterns of magic. They look like auras, but free-floating. There are patterns in the air, earth and water—curves and zigzags and stepped lines, and many other patterns. They are the hardest to see without training. They are most easily seen when Tavaedies dance.”

Kemla raised her hand. “Which are stronger?
Morvae
or
Imorvae
?”

“It’s not a matter of stronger. Both are useful for different things.”

From behind her, Brena heard Rthan snort. “You’ve been tricked by Rainbow Labyrinth into rolling for knucklebones, if you believe that.”

Brena whirled on him, furious. “Are
you
teaching here?”

“
Imorvae
are
filthy
and weak,” Rthan said, unapologetically. “They dilute their main Chroma by dabbling in Chromas they can’t master.
They spoil like rotted fruit, becoming hideous and putrid on the outside, effete and impotent on the inside,
which is why they resort to
hexc
raft to achieve by guile what they can’t achieve by main force.
Among my people, they are
Shunned
.
”

The Initiates burst into babble, which Brena quelled only with greatest effort. She would have liked to strangle Rthan.

“Now you can see the difference between Yellow Bear and our enemies,” she told the Initiates, while her gaze scorched Rthan. “Most
Blue Waters Tavaedies are One-Banded Blue
, but that is not why we disagree with them. Most of our Tavaedies are
One-Banded
too,
Yellow
, but
we
do not
Shun
our rare
Many-Banded
Initiates, as they do. In fact, we even welcome in the
Imorvae
persecuted in other tribes.”

“Why were they persecuted to begin with?” Tamio demanded.

“Tamio of Broken Basket.” Brena put her hands on her hips, stern and teacher-like again. “If you have a question, you will raise your hand and wait to be addressed before you ask it.”

He raised his hand. “Why did the Bone Whistler try to kill
the
Imorvae
?”

“To this day, no one knows why the Bone Whistler hated
the
Imorvae
so much. Who can understand hate so strong it would lead men to massacre innocents?” She glanced pointedly at Rthan, and this time he looked away first. “According to one rumor, the Bone Whistler had a magic Looking Bowl that showed him he could be killed only by
someone with six Chromas—an Imorvae or
an Aelfae. Long, long ago, when the Aelfae and the humans went to war, some humans—the
Imorvae
—sided with the Aelfae.
It’s said that’s why they acquired the gift of Many-Banded magic. Even after the Aelfae were destroyed, the Imorvae retained their power.
So maybe the Bone Whistler thought that by annihilating all the
Imorvae
, he would be protecting himself.”

Brena clapped her hands three times. “Enough of that for now. It’s time to begin your exercises.”

From
her hiding place, Dindi couldn’t hear any of the
lecture
from the subterranean storage room connected by a stone passage to the kiva. But through the crack in the rawhide door, she could see down the passage into the kiva, so she was able to copy Brena as she demonstrated motions to the Initiates.
It would have to do. Outcastes couldn’t expect front seats to the Vooma.